Like all really fine works of fiction, this one has tendrils that anchor it in the real world. Boundary disputes and ethnic hatred still drive our politics and our armies. Just a week after I discussed the book with my groups, a news story, “A Bend in the River,” ran in The New York Times, about an area of border land that for many years was officially in America but fully administered by the Mexican government. The story made the point that the new border security fences effectively create new disputed territories, either where Mexicans live and America owns the land or vice versa.

As Will Blythe wrote in a Times review, “Only in the greatest of historical novels do we come to feel both the distance of the past and our own likely complicity in the sins of a former age, had we been a part of it. To that rank, we now add ‘The Son.’”

Turns out nearly everyone in my group loved it. That was a bonus. Be sure to put this one on your gift list.

Copyright © 2013 Randi Kreiss. Randi can be reached at randik3@aol.com.